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Age Restrictions In Gambling And Why They Matter

By their nature, most teenagers suffer from ignorance, which coupled with a know-it-all attitude, makes them both unbearable to be around, as well as wrong for the vast majority of the time. As you can imagine, they would all like to be doing adult stuff, but in reality, are just too immature to make adult decisions. And that's the simple reason why we need age restrictions in place. Whether it's about driving cars, voting, or playing in a casino, teens need to law to help them help themselves.

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Gambling Age Restrictions

We remember back when we were teenagers and thought that the world was our oyster. And yet adults were always stopping us from doing the things we wanted to do. We would be forever questioning why we’re unable to drink, smoke, or drive a car until a certain age. Hell, there were even age restrictions for gambling, movies, and driving. The whole unfairness of it all. Of course, part and parcel of being a teenager is thinking that you already know it all and certainly know what’s best for yourself. It’s only natural that we feel we are quite capable of making “mature” decisions well before the law gives us permission. Gambling and going into the casino also fall under these same frustrations of age limits.

Age Restrictions for Gambling: The Age of the Majority

It’s of little consequence how old you might feel or how mature you might act. What’s called the “age of the majority” sets a physical age limit on certain activities. And it is this age of majority that allows people to write and sign contracts that specify an age. How else could you measure someone’s maturity? The law on gambling says that all gambling activity is forbidden for minors. If you join an online site like 22Bet Casino, you’re required to register and state your DOB or age. If you win the jackpot online, then you’ll again have to show some form of official ID with the birth date present as part of today’s KYC requirements.

This helps enforce the age restrictions of gambling. Keep in mind, that if a minor enters a casino, and even wins something, then it’s the casino that’s at fault. As minors are considered below the age of criminal responsibility.

All Gambling Activities Are Covered By Strict Laws

To save the casinos the effort, governments pass laws governing the eligibility of minors to gamble. As a teenager, you’re perfectly able to learn how to play poker, blackjack, or any casino table game, but only in your own home. You can even play for money to try and increase your jackpot winning chances. In which case your parents may be accountable. We don’t care. But, when it comes to licensed establishments, well, you have to follow their rules which are also the law. Part of the reason against teens being able to gamble is to protect the underage from consequences that may later have a negative effect on their own lives.

Managing Risks Comes With Intellectual And Emotional Maturity

Many habits, whether good or bad, tend to develop whilst the person is still in their youth or even younger. So, taking the average of problem gamblers to be between 5 – 10% of all gamblers, then many would first come into contact with gambling when they were younger and more easily influenced. Gambling as an adolescent is a sure way to impose a pattern of behaviors on a susceptible person. On the whole, a person’s maturity finally occurs between the ages of 18 -26 in men. That’s the numbers the National Academy of Sciences determined in 2014. But it’s always hard to know the age when good choices with regard to risky behavior take place.

Age Restrictions To Protect Younger Gamblers

There are a number of professional sports that don’t allow teenagers to compete. It’s not just that they lack the physical attributes necessary to compete, but also emotional maturity. On the other side of this argument, which is to protect children from the “real world”, there’s another school of thought which has shown that children under repeated stress do mature faster. But we might want to keep in mind that children are simply not capable of making adult decisions. And gambling is all about taking risks with money. Most societies deem it too risky for young people to partake in and so set fixed age restrictions.

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Age Restrictions For Financial Responsibility

When we’re talking about the inherent risk associated with gambling, the bottom line comes down to money. Or more importantly the source of gambling funds. Most governments don’t care if a punter bet’s the house, the car, and the family inheritance. Just as long as they can collect the tax on those wagers. In the same way that governments don’t ban smoking, but just up the price for an addictive drug. All so that they can get their share of taxes. We digress. But the legality of something that has the potential to be absolutely self-destructive really bores down to this salient fact.

Essentially teens don’t have access to the monetary sums to lose at the casino. If they did, then casinos and the law would welcome them with open arms. The online gaming industry, with its games and various consoles, is happy to take huge sums from the young. But your average teenager, who’s playing poker or blackjack at the casino, isn’t unable to utilise proper jackpot winning strategies and thereby cover his losses. And though a casino may never ask the source of your cash (and just think about how much-stolen funds pass through their doors), you still have to come up with those initial funds and return with new funds.

Unless the source is illegal, then it’s very difficult for your average dumb teenager to find funding for any casino action. And just think if you were running a casino based on the financial well-being of teenagers. You’d be out of business within the week.

Addictive Behavior Is More Likely To Form In Youngsters

The general scientific thinking is that teenagers are more likely to fall into addiction. And fall at a faster rate than your average adult. Gambling addiction is probably the number one reason why many oppose the spread of organized and legal gambling. And with the care and social help needed to assist those who have fallen through the cracks, ending up as gambling addicts, then you could point to the financial cost of this affliction. Then there’s the criminal behavior that goes hand in hand with supporting a gambling addiction. There has been shown, time and again, a definite and quantifiable connection between crime and gambling.

So having age restrictions for gambling, whether on a casino, land or online-based or any other gambling establishment, is a good starting point. The general idea is that good governance exists to help the population grow up to be responsible and meaningful members of that society. The last thing anyone wants is kids obsessed with how to win the jackpot online.

Gambling Age Restrictions Make Sense

The protection of children is the most important if we are talking about gambling authorities. So what Is the Youngest Legal Gambling Age in the World? In order to answer this, we took a look at Wikipedia. The article includes a few other less rigid restrictions in gambling:

Private or non-commercial gaming and betting
Equal chance gaming (prize gaming permitted or licensed family entertainment)
Prize gaming at an unlicensed family entertainment center or traveling fair

The United Kingdom also permits 16-year-olds to gamble in:

National lottery
Scratch-off ticket games
Football pools

Another country enacting unusual gambling laws in Afghanistan. They strictly forbid any gambling activities in land-based casinos. But anything goes online, including the fact that children of any age can gamble and have a shot at jackpot games. Though if they’re playing casino games in a foreign online casino like 22Bet Casino, they will be unable to cash out. Also, Tunisia has the same system by a weird default. They simply failed to implement gambling age restrictions, even for kids. In Malawi, in Southwestern Africa, children 5 years old can enter and gamble at the casino. But a quick trip around the globe reveals that the average age requirements for gambling at such establishments are between 17 – 21 years of age.